Racing Home

Racing Home

The Racing Home project aims to improve the working lives of parents and carers in the horse racing industry. It also helps employees understand their rights and entitlements and encourages open conversations about the challenges they face as working mothers, fathers, or carers.

Racing employers can address these needs inclusively, rather than treating them as taboo. Doing so benefits the sport through better retention, a more motivated workforce, and greater overall sustainability.

Education plays a key role in Racing Home. By sharing guidance and highlighting good practices around parenthood, Women in Racing helps make the sport more accessible and enjoyable for everyone.

This will play a part in transforming a more traditional culture and mindset, thus attracting people from outside the sport to join racing.

The Beginnings

The ’Racing Home’ project started with a symposium in November 2019, followed by a series of successful workshops and webinars. Dr. Kate Clayton-Hathway from the Centre for Diversity Policy Research and Practice at Oxford Brookes University then led a research project based on these events. Discussions with participants from across horseracing provided the data on motherhood and parenting experiences, which the project later expanded by gathering views from a wider range of stakeholders.

Participants suggested solutions to address both practical and less tangible barriers for working mothers in the sport. The project team compiled these ideas and, in consultation with key stakeholders, developed a series of recommended next steps for the industry.

The findings formed the report ‘Racing Home, Working Mothers in the Horseracing Industry’ which was published late last year.